MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Interview
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HAYES: What do you make of that?
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Yes. This is the kind of thing that just reminds you, these folks have never lived paycheck to paycheck and they have no understanding of what the lives are like for people who expect to get a paycheck regularly, go out work for it, and build their whole budgets around that, build their whole lives around that. And instead, you know, for Donald Trump, for Wilbur Ross 800,000 federal workers are just pawns in a political game for them.
That is fundamentally wrong. It`s wrong in human terms and it`s the kind of thing that just makes us realize these are not the guys who should be running our government.
HAYES: Let me -- I want to ask you one more follow up on this. You -- the first book here as I read which is called Two-Income Trap which you co- wrote with your daughter, it`s a really interesting book, is literally about the situation these workers are facing right. It`s about the fact that people with decent paychecks and good steady jobs in America still find themselves stretched, still, don`t have savings.
WARREN: That`s right.
HAYES: Why is it that there`s such a representational gap in this country between those people and their live reality and what the Commerce Secretary and the President and so much of the sort of Washington class says?
WARREN: So actually, I`m glad you asked about it because Two-Income Trap, you`re exactly right. It`s the book I wrote in the early 2000s with my daughter, and what we talked about in that is how many tens of millions of families live their lives so close to the financial edge. And contrary to popular wisdom at the time we wrote this book, it`s not because they overspend, because they have affluenza which is what people were writing about at the time.
It`s because flat wages and rising expenses for housing, for health insurance, to educate your kids had just put a terrible squeeze on families and that squeeze has gotten worse. And that fits right into what I`m talking about today with a wealth tax. You`re right. These pieces line up.
Look at it this way. For years now, for decades now, rich people have gone to Washington and said just tilt the playing field in our favor just a little bit. And then they come back and say, tilt it just a little bit more. And the next year tilt it just a little bit more, just a little bit more, just a little bit more until today in America, the top one-tenth of one percent has amassed about as much wealth as 90 percent of America.
Upper middle class, middle class, working class, working poor, and the poor poor, and the consequence of having amassed that much wealth is bad for our economy. Tiny group of people making decisions that always tend to favor a lot of big corporations and bad for our democracy because it means just like you hear, it`s now a democracy that is influenced by the wealthy, the well-connected and is not working for you the people.
HAYES: So you have this proposal today, it`s a wealth tax. It`s very interesting. It`s not -- it`s not income, right? So incomes are flows. You know, everyone -- money coming in two people a year and that`s usually how we tax things. Wealth is sitting there. It`s a stock. It`s a thing that`s sitting there and a wealth tax is a novel idea in the American context. It`s on the very richest households with $50 million or more in assets. It`s about 75,000 households. It would bring in a lot of money, $275 billion a year. So this is a lot. There`s also a tax for billionaires.
Here`s my question you. The first thing I hear when I look at this and talk to other people is they`re going to get out of it. If you pass this and you try to go to Wilbur Ross` assets or you try to come after Donald Trump`s assets or any of these people, they are going to find a way to get out of it. What do you say to that?
WARREN: I say, you think I didn`t see that one coming? So the way that this is written is to say first of all, it`s going to tax all your assets wherever located around the globe. So if you were planning to move them to Switzerland or some Island, it doesn`t make any difference. They are all going to be taxed. The second part of it is we`re going to build right into the administration of this tax that it has a very high rate of monitoring, of auditing so rich people on the ultra-millionaire tax.
So we`re going to be out there counting them and watching them. And the third part of it is you know, once you identify these assets, it`s actually not that complicated in the heart because unlike some other places that tried to build this, this one isn`t going to have a bunch of exceptions. This one says all your assets wherever located and we`re going to keep counting. And you`re going to have to pay if you have more than $50 million in assets, this is the ultra-rich, you`ve got to have to pay two percent a year of that amount over $50 million.
And here`s the deal about the money though. I want to underline this part. It`s to use that money to build opportunity for the rest of America. So this is the kind of money. Think about this over the next decade we could produce just short of $3 trillion. That`s what kind of money where we could pay for child care, high-quality childcare for all of our kids.
It`s the kind of money where we could do real relief on student loan debt. It`s the kind of money well we could make a real start on a green new deal. It`s the kind of money where we could bring down the cost of health care. It`s the kind of money where you give somebody else in this economy a chance. A government that`s not just working for the tippy-top, a government that starts to work for the rest of America.
HAYES: So there`s been this -- I think that Overton Window as they call it the sort of center of this conversation is really shifted. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had floated a 70 percent top marginal rate. You`ve come out with this wealth tax idea which has not -- which doesn`t have a history in the U.S. unlike the top marginal rate.
WARREN: No, this is brand new.
HAYES: It`s brand new. Although I will note to people out there who own a home, you`re paying the wealth tax right now called property taxes so it does exist in America. I guess a question is there are -- there is a sense that this is crossing some line, right? You see this in Davos where they`re laughing at this idea and you see it on Trump T.V. where they say this is the death of the American Dream, that there`s something un-American
about coming after the billionaires and their millions, and what do you say to that?
WARREN: So let me -- let me think about this in terms of just basic fairness. Look, I believe in a progressive income tax but basic fairness compared two people. One has inherited $500 million and has paintings and yachts and airplanes and brings in $50,000 a year in doing some work. The other one, public school teacher, doesn`t have anything in savings and makes $50,000 a year. Currently, in America, they get taxed exactly the same. That`s a tax system that is really helping the rich and the powerful.
HAYES: Wait, wait a second, though.
WARREN: Not -- I don`t want get too easy, but the person who`s sitting on $300 million has some passive income coming off those that they`re going to pay some taxes on. Not if they have paintings, not if they have --
HAYES: OK, right.
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HAYES: It`s a Wilbur Ross who have all their money in slippers and paintings.
WARREN: Exactly right. Exactly. Yes, he has it all in slippers. But the -- but the real point is when we`re only taxing income, we`re taxing two people who may have the same income but are in wildly different economic circumstances. And here`s the deal. Think about the lead up to this. Rich folks for a long time have been pushing Washington. They`ve been lobbying Washington. They`ve been making campaign contributions. They`ve been doing bought and paid for experts to get all of the rules just tilt it a little more and a little more and a little more in their favor. That`s how they`ve amassed this wealth. And that`s how it is that it has gotten so wildly out of proportion.
I understand not everybody`s going to make the same, I get that. But we are now in an America where one-tenth of one percent has about the same wealth as 90 percent of America. And here`s the deal, 40 percent of America today can`t come up with $400.00 on an emergency.
HAYES: That`s why folks are in the red line.
WARREN: That`s right. That is not an economy that is sustainable, and it`s not a democracy that`s sustainable.
HAYES: I want to -- I want to ask you before I let you go because you`re here and you`ve got a shutdown that`s happening right now it`s where we started this conversation. There`s some talk of some movement, people seemed -- the White House seems to be aware now that it is for lack of a better word, getting its butt kicked on this. What do you see happening? What`s your sense? You`re in the Senate.
WARREN: Look, the Republicans in the Senate have made clear that they are afraid of Donald Trump. They`re not willing to cross him. So the question is when is Donald Trump got to feel enough pressure that he`s going to get this government back and running. Because that has to be the starting point for anything. People are hurting. We need the government functioning.
The idea that there are tens of thousands of people who are working and not getting paid, that`s not what we do in this country. And thousands and thousands and thousands more who have been locked out of work and can`t get paid, that`s not what we do in this country. Our federal workers are not pawns in Donald Trump`s political game. We need to get this government open.
HAYES: All right, Elizabeth Warren is the Senator from Massachusetts, also running for president this year. Thank you for making some time to stop by. I appreciate it.
WARREN: Thank you for having me.
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